Typically, utility meters (e.g., gas meters, water meters, electricity meters, etc.) are read manually by meter readers who are employees or contractors of the various utility providers. Manual meter reading represents a significant cost to a typical utility provider. With the advent of wireless technology including mesh networking, utility providers have sought methods and systems for remote reading of meters and/or remote control of the meters or an attached device or apparatus.
Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI), Advanced Metering Reading (AMR), or Advanced Metering Management (AMM) are systems that measure, collect, and analyze utility data using advanced metering devices such as water meters, gas meters, and electricity meters. The advanced metering devices combine internal data measurements with continuously available remote communications, enabling the metering devices to transmit and receive data through the AMI, AMR, and/or AMM network. In a typical configuration, an advanced metering device, such as an advanced water meter, measures and collects usage data, such as water usage data, at a customer's location. The metering device then uses a built-in communication interface to transmit data to a parent node up the network, often in response to the parent's request for such information. In this way, utility providers may remotely “read” customer usage data for billing purposes.
The transmitting and receiving components of the mesh network (i.e., utility provider, collector nodes, repeater nodes, meters, etc.) may communicate using radio frequency (RF) transmission. However, in some environments having a high number of nodes concentrated around a collection node, data collisions may occur, especially during peak times of data transmissions (e.g., reporting meter usage data during times of heavier traffic), making communications between devices more difficult and less efficient.